


Pain and Pleasure in Equal Measure (?)

by MutteringsofMadness



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Emotionally Constipated Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Episode Fix-It: s01e06 Rare Species, Fix-It of Sorts, Hurt Jaskier | Dandelion, Hurts So Good, Idiots in Love, Jaskier is an angsty artist, M/M, POV Jaskier | Dandelion, Song: Her Sweet Kiss (The Witcher), Sort of poetry?, Strong Language, They still banter even if they love eachother
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:28:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25133911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MutteringsofMadness/pseuds/MutteringsofMadness
Summary: Love always ended in heartbreak, but falling in love was so delightfully fun, and having his heart crushed was so, so delightfully painful.-a meditational/semi-poetic piece following Jaskier's wounded artist's heart that seeks out pain for it's own sake. First chapter's moody AF, and the second one, I wrote drunk and its filled with banter and enough fluff to kill a man-
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 3
Kudos: 47





	1. Chapter 1

Jaskier was thirteen when he finally figured out why his life was so damned dramatic.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t attribute it to legitimately having the worst life and the worst luck that everyone had ever had. There wasn’t an ancient curse to blame, or a spell gone awry, or some jealous sorcerer behind it all, determined to make his every moment violently emotional. No, when Jaskier was thirteen and he was crying over his third broken heart of the month, he realized that the problem may have been a bit more internal in nature.

It wasn’t that he didn’t know how bloody dramatic he could be. His mum had been saying it to him for years. He knew he laughed too loud and cried too easily, and he was willing to accept that. But that shiver of acute enjoyment that cut up his spine when he sobbed into his pillow the night Helefrah left him for Teigan would haunt him for years.

Because that pain, that agony, was, in a way enjoyable, wasn’t it? It gave him something to fuss over. It was like an old scrape that he couldn’t help but prod and pick at until it took far longer to heal than it should have. Falling in love and the heartache that inevitably followed it gave him something to dream about. Something to fuss over in those sharp, swirly hours of the morning when he couldn’t sleep and didn’t want to be left to his own thoughts.

Love always ended in heartbreak, but falling in love was so delightfully fun, and having his heart crushed was so, so delightfully painful.

Eventually, Jaskier’s endless turmoil ended up on pages. It was scrawled on scraps of parchment and crammed onto slate tablets, pouring out of clumsy rhyme schemes and heavy-handed analogies. A smile from a girl at market or a grin from a boy at the stables would be cemented into instant obsession and would be inflated into love in the hungry depths of his mind. And when those infatuations fell through, when his forthright affection was turned down, or when he was used and tossed away, he let his heartbreak fester as long as it could, staining pages with macabre, delectably miserable ramblings.

It was only natural that these poems turned into songs. His lute playing, which had once been a chore became another obsession, worse than any other. He’d stay up and play and strum until his fingers bled and his head spun. He played on the roof when it got too late, and hoped that some young, beautiful spirit would traipse along and hear him so he could fall in and out of love with them.

When he decided to go off to Oxenfurt instead of apprenticing with the blacksmith or the tailor, a new wellspring of pain was revealed to him.

His relationship with his parents had always been a little icy. They preferred his younger sisters that did what they were told, what was expected of them. Jaskier was well used to not being the favorite, but it managed to surprise him when his father scratched him out of the will, and his mother locked him out of his childhood home the night he told them about Oxenfurt.

He’d sat outside the door, clutching his lute, and let a new pain open in him, dark, black and seething, and unlike anything he’d really felt before. And even though tears gathered in his eyes, and he knew he was making a fool out of himself, something in him curled up in pleasure at the agony that flooded him.

His songs were darker, the words falling out of his head unstoppably fast, and better than they had ever been, fueled by the chasm that had opened in him.

When he got to Oxenfurt, the world opened up around him. A range of brand new joys and pains, highs, and lows. The women and men weren’t just village girls or farmers. These were artists and academics, the kinds of people that could wrap him completely around their fingers one night, and leave him shattered and empty the next. His songs were filled to bursting with sunshine smiles, and glossy hair, and dark smirks and eyes that pooled up with the midnight sky.

He never felt more alive than those times he got to feel.

It was just the way of things. The unspoken rule of the artist. They sought thrills, joy, and pain in equal measure like it were wine to the lips of a drunkard. They all craved feelings more than food itself.

When Jaskier left Oxenfurt for the road, it was like a drunkard suddenly finding himself locked in a prison cell with naught but water to drink.

The world seemed to thin out around him. His joy wasn’t falling in love or winning bardic competitions, or feeling the adoring eyes of another person. His joy was managing to make enough money to pay for a pint at the end of a day of walking. His heartbreak wasn’t cruel acts of destiny or bitter betrayal, it was getting a rock stuck in his boot, or having a lute string snap when he was days away from a market.

Jaskier was starving, slowly. His songs had lost their heart. Old wounds were beginning to close, and no matter how much Jaskier scratched at them, they were healing up, leaving neat little scars in their place.

And he hated it.

So, when one of his rowdier songs didn’t land particularly well with the little shit-stain, backwater town, Posada, Jaskier was just about at the end of his godsdamn rope. No appreciation for artistry.

Or their bread, evidently, considering the small pile of it that had landed on the floor. Then, he happened to look up and lay eyes upon the one bastard in that joint who wasn’t staring at him like he was a rotting mince pie, and a sudden spark lit in his gut.

Oh, there was something interesting. Bulky, brooding, white-haired but not old, dual swords on the bench, and Jaskier was utterly intrigued the way he hadn’t been in years of that lonely road.

When his prodding, teasing, and alright, fair enough, flirting opening lines were met with a cold reply of “They don’t exist,” Jaskier couldn’t resist the shiver that shot up his spine.

The man was looking--or rather not looking at him--as if Jaskier might as well have been dirt under his boot and correcting him, and he smelled of danger and onions, and Jaskier was absolutely gone.

It wasn’t quite like his normal infatuations. No, those typically involved a lot of wine, and warm skin, and clever glances and double entendres, whereas with his Witcher, it was dusty roads and punches to the balls, and nearly having his throat slit by mad elves.

And Jaskier could fucking get enough of it.

This was adrenaline like he’d never felt before. It lit a spark in him that blazed into a fire until it felt like every inch of him was tingling, lyrics pouring out of his head, itching to dance through the air. Geralt was totally different than anyone Jaskier had met and he was utterly thrilling.

Since Jaskier had the self control of a babe faced with his mother’s tit, it would be an understatement to say that Jaskier latched onto Geralt. He followed after him, trading his insults with banter, squeezing stories out of him in those late, crackly hours of the night around a fire when Geralt would finally entertain his ceaseless questions with a few answers.

He’d watch battles from the sideline, and Geralt would watch him out of the corner of his eye when he played at taverns, and when their paths separated, Jaskier always made sure to track Geralt down in another year or two.

His world, which had grown so very droll and bland and neutral, was suddenly bursting with every color imaginable, and it was all mostly due to his Witcher.

The time he didn’t spend with Geralt, his Witcher always came up. In his songs, with the people he met, with the contests he won. Jaskier had lovers and thrills of their own, of course. The Countess DeStael was an excellent resource of pain and pleasure in equal measure. But it always came back to his Witcher and the strange things he brought about. Jaskier’s feelings were a tempest, and Geralt was at its heart, this wellspring of irreplaceable excitement.

When they encountered the sorceress, though, everything seemed to shift. Suddenly that shiver of excitement turned into a twist of pain, and even though Jaskier tried to ignore it, he couldn’t do that forever. It was worse than when the countess left him. It burned in a way that Jaskier couldn’t put into words.

So, he did what he always did, and poured that pain into music. It stung like a motherfucker, more so than anything had ever stung before, but damn did it make for good art.

Besides, he still had Geralt. Even if the sorceress managed to complicate everything. 

Even he would come to admit that it was a bit funny how long it took him to sort all of that pain out. His heartbreak over losing Geralt was so acute that he didn’t even recognize it for what it was until it was said to him outright.

A sudden, cold burst of fury, like white fire that left him speechless for once in his life.

“If life could give me one blessing, it would be to take you off my hands.”

Jaskier’s heart broke, and he realized as that twist of pain gave way to tears that he was a damned fool.

He would always seek pain. He always had. It was in his nature, in his blood, as much as smiling or music. Jaskier had no idea that all along, Geralt hadn’t been a spark of excitement, he had been the first step to the greatest heartbreak of Jaskier’s life.

Oh, that pain ripped through him. It tore open a darker, deeper chasm than he’d ever felt, and Jaskier cursed himself for having done this to himself yet again. 

The fairer sex they often call it, but her love’s as unfair as a crook.

For the first time, he began to ask himself why? Why was the falling always followed by hitting the ground? Why did it have to hurt? Why did something as incredible as his friendship with Geralt have to end in tears? And was it all worth it?

It steals all my reason, commits every treason of logic with naught but a look.

At least, without Geralt there, he could cry as he played. It was one of his favorite pastimes. There was something melancholically beautiful about the way his voice broke when he sang. Sweet, sweet agony as he felt his voice thicken with tears and regret sting at his throat. Overwhelming. A wave. A stinging, aching, throbbing wave.

A storm raging on the horizon of longing and heartache and lust…

The fire burned his eyes, but he kept staring because even a tiny, scorching pain like that fuelled the wellspring of self-pity that he thrived off of.

She’s always bad news, it’s always lose-lose. Tell me, love, how is that just?

Thoughts sprang up. Wondering what it would have been like if they had never met the sorceress. If Jaskier had never accidentally shoved Geralt into her arms. If things could be the way they were before, back when Jaskier could follow after Geralt and the world could be in color.

But the story is this, she’ll destroy with her sweet kiss.

For once, though, Jaskier had to stop those ramblings midway. The pain was enough to swallow his throat entirely, and his heart pounded, and he ached like he never had before and--

Her current is pulling you closer, it’s charging the hot humid night.

He couldn’t go back. He could never fix it, never reverse the magnets that seemed to draw Geralt to Yennefer like it was destiny.

The red sky at dawn is giving a warning, You fool, better stay out of sight.

With an aching dullness, Jaskier knew there was nothing he could do. But accepting that was much harder, even as he crouched beside the fire and clutched his lute like it were his lifeline and tried not to dribble tears on his strings.

I am weak my love, and I am wanting.  
It had taken years of self-flagellation, years of chasing pain, years of pursuing anything but numbness, but it seemed that Jaskier had finally met his limit. Losing Geralt was the one pain that he couldn’t handle. He’d finally gone too far. He’d chased a pain he wasn’t able to bear. And there was no one to blame but himself.

If this is the path I must trudge, I’ll welcome my sentence, give to you my penance, garroter, jury, and judge.

His witcher had always been his muse. His greatest muse, if he was going to be qualifying things. He supposed it only made sense that the pain he felt when he finally lost Geralt would be the greatest pain of all.

The story is this, she’ll destroy with her sweet kiss.


	2. Chapter 2

For once in his life, Jaskier actually wanted his wounds to heal up quickly.

This was, of course, a supremely fucking frustrating fact considering that he had the kind of wound that just refused to heal up right. Every time he moved, it seemed to reopen, and re-scar, and even though he didn’t want to feel a damn thing, he couldn’t stop running his fingers over it, reliving that pain again and again and again.

He hadn’t seen Geralt since the mountain.

He’d gone months, sometimes years without seeing him before, but never this long. Never two years. It was odd to think that they wouldn’t at least bump into each other, seeing as how they would happen upon each other all the time in those ten years before everything went to hell. If Jaskier wanted to be utterly honest with himself, it was likely that all those run-ins were far from random chance. It wasn’t like he rushed after Geralt like a maid after a large-cocked man, but when he heard of the Witcher off in the east or making trouble in the North, he’d adjust his path, set them towards each other.

It was a business practicality, of course. That’s what he told himself anyway. Songs about their adventures always made him rich and famous, so it was only natural he’d pursue Geralt to collect more tales.

Only after he realized that he’d managed to become hopefully infatuated with Geralt, and subsequently had lost him forever did Jaskier realize that it might have had a bit less to do with business than he’d initially assumed. 

Traveling without Geralt was (not to be dramatic) one of the most mind-numbingly, miserable, painful tasks of Jaskier’s life. Every time he turned away from a path that he knew would lead him back to the White Wolf it was like a physical pain in his heart. A tugging that didn’t go away no matter how many women he bedded, or how many bottles he’d emptied or how many hours he played before adoring audiences.

And even though this pain twisted, so bitterly in his gut, it wouldn’t come out in songs. The words were stuck in his throat the way they never had been before. And though Jaskier still sang about the Witcher, because he was a fairly astute businessman, he didn’t enjoy it. His repertoire shifted slowly, featuring much less specific songs. Songs about women and booze that didn’t make it feel like his heart was trying to crawl out of his face.

Life was fading to gray, and nothing would fix it. Any little heartbreak he felt was nothing compared to the vast one looming over him, and he knew it.

“I’m sorry,” he gasped as the blacksmith’s apprentice rolled off of him, huffing. “I just…”

“S’alright,” the man growled (it was of course, not the deepest growl that Jaskier had ever heard by far, but dammit, no he would not think about the Witcher, not while he was in bed with a very viable man who would probably appreciate it if he could get his dick up already--) 

The blacksmith’s apprentice (Teegan? Or Legan?) sat up, lacing up his trousers, and Jaskier grimaced, finding his shirt to tug back on. “I’m just awfully tired--”

The man shot him a look and Jaskier’s mouth fell closed.

“Who is it?” The man asked as he pulled his boots back on. “Wife at home? Girl married someone else?”

“Oh, no, no, no,” Jaskier tried to laugh, but it was thin, even to his own ears. “No one, like that I assure you.”

“Your mind was with someone else,” The man said, cutting Jaskier off before he could babble any further.

“It wasn’t,” Jaskier shot back, ignoring the fact that he sounded a bit like a put-out child.

The man just grunted in reply, and Jaskier felt guilt well up in him, hot and thick and stinging, and he crawled back into the blacksmith apprentice’s lap and kissed him until he was willing to ignore the fact that Jaskier was too miserable to get it up.

Jaskier’s life seemed to be a lot like that, lately. Forcing himself through things just to try and make him feel a bit more like his old self. It was a tried and true method. He’d fall in love again eventually. He’d learn how to sing love songs again. He had to.

Two years later, Geralt found him. Jaskier almost didn’t recognize him, considering that he was so drunk that the world was swaying around him, and he was in such a damned hurry, and when his eyes lighted on silver hair and a flash of golden eyes, he was so surprised that he tripped on a floor tile and hit the ground hard enough to make his nose bleed. “Fuck,” he hissed, reaching up for his nose. Broken. Definitely broken. Oh lord. He did not cope well with his bones being broken. It was one of his least favorite things. And it throbbed like a motherfucker, even through the haze of two bottles of free wine, and he was already nauseous, and now--

“You have a mustache.”

“Bloody brilliant observation,” Jaskier slurred. At least drunkenness was good for something. He’d rehearsed and imagined a thousand times what he’d say to Geralt once they stumbled into each other again, but that all went out the window because he could hear footsteps behind him, and angry shouting, and Melitele’s tits, he needed to be running.

“Jaskier--”

“Running,” Jaskier gasped, as he stumbled to his feet, and clutched at his nose in a futile attempt to keep blood from running into the rather impressive mustache he’d recently decided to grow out.

He felt Geralt beside him, keeping up easily as they sprinted down the corridor.

By the time they burst past the front door, ignoring the guards, and onto the bustle of the street, Jaskier was swaying on his feet, his lungs burning, nose throbbing, and back aching from where his lute banged into him.

“You slept with his daughter?” Geralt asked as they walked as swiftly as they could without drawing glances, away from the front door of the manor.

“Both of them,” Jaskier said, hating how nasal his voice sounded. Then again, it couldn’t be helped. His nose was absolutely busted. “What are you doing here?” Jaskier asked. “I suppose you didn’t just come here to rescue me? Not that I’d be surprised after all. You know, I didn’t think--”

“Scullery maid had a contract,” Geralt grumbled, cutting Jaskier off entirely.

“Oh,” Jaskier said, hating that his voice sounded broken. It was a very drunk part of him, but all the same, a part of him had hoped against all hope, that Geralt really had been there to save him. That was an impossibility, of course. How would he have known Jaskier was in trouble? Jaskier would have laughed at himself if he didn’t suddenly feel like crying.

“This is where you’re staying,” Geralt said, stopping dead. 

Jaskier nearly crashed into him entirely, scrambling to retain his balance and squint up through the darkness at the sign. “It is, yes. How did you know that?”

Rather than answer, Geralt just grunted and pushed into the inn, leaving Jaskier to trail behind him. Geralt was already at the front of the inn, speaking to the innkeeper who looked downright terrified, and Jaskier leaned hard against an empty table, trying to put his thoughts in order.

Was this a dream? He wouldn’t put it past himself. Of course, in a dream, he expected he wouldn’t be bleeding from a crushed nose, and Geralt would be doing much more than just hauling Jaksier out of trouble, and he probably wouldn’t have been so damn confused about the whole thing.

Within moments, Geralt was approaching him with a look like a storm on his face, and taking Jaskier by the arm and hauling him into the back hallway. “Geralt, maybe this isn’t the best time to ask this, but what the hell are you doing? I can walk on my own, you know. I can...Well, no, perhaps tonight hasn’t been the best way to show that I can take care of myself, but you know, I’ve done very--not very well, but I’ve done well enough without you. Two years without you, and I haven’t died once, imagine that? Not that you care, you big, silent, onion--”

“Clean up,” Geralt said, shoving Jaskier into a room. His room. His pack was in the corner, and Geralt had somehow brought him to his room.

Jaskier stumbled into the door, the world reeling around him, and gods, maybe he really was drunk. He braced himself against the bed before he could collapse, and whipped around before Geralt could shut the door. “Geralt!”

The silence dragged out between them as Geralt halted, raising a silver brow at him, and suddenly, fixed under that rich, gold gaze, and seeing his Witcher in the doorway, filling it out, not blurry and strange like Geralt always got in his dreams, Jaskier was certain that he’d never had a singular thought before. Not a single one. He gaped, much as a fish would, because bloody hell, he’d been waiting for years to talk to Geralt, to shout at him, to drag an apology out of him, to somehow fix that pain that welled up in him like an infected wound, but now, here he was, looking like a godsdamned fish and--

“We’re leaving at sunrise.”

Well. There was that, then. Certainly. Yes. Of course. We.

“Jask?”

“Hmm?”

“Shave. The mustache doesn’t suit you.”

...

Jaskier woke up with one of the worst hangovers of his life, and the immutable desire to shave his face. The mustache was itchy anyway.

That first hour of the morning was vastly uncomfortable. He’d woken with a start, not certain of where he was (Something he’d become somewhat accustomed to over the past year or so), and had to face the idea that everything might have been a dream. A vivid dream, but a dream all the same. He didn’t let himself hope that it wasn’t. Failed hopes stung like a bitch.

Jaskier was ready before the sun had risen outside the tiny window of the cramped inn, and waiting, trying not to prod at his bruised nose or pick at his lute calluses. He should have gone out into the hall, looked for Geralt, seen if he was mad after all, but somehow waiting seemed the less humiliating alternative. So he waited. And agonized, because if he wasn’t agonizing, then he was hardly being Jaskier.

It had felt like an eternity but had actually been roughly eight minutes when he heard a heavy knock on the door. Jaskier jumped about a foot in the air, leapt to his feet, tried to fix his hair, stroked his mustache which--dammit--was no longer there, and tried to think of how long was societally acceptable to wait before opening a door before he finally went and opened the fucking thing.

Once he opened it, his traitorous heart decided to mutiny, attempting to crawl its way right out of his throat, because Geralt was standing there, in all of his not-actually-that-tall, but oh gods his muscles--glory. Brooding of course, because that’s all he knew how to do with his face. And if Jaskier told him to smile he’d just get a grunt and ignored for the next half hour, and dammit all, Jaskier was still in love with him, wasn’t he?

“Come on,” Geralt said, pushing towards the end of the corridor, leaving Jaskier to scramble for his lute and pack and hurry after him.

“What about the contract?” Jaskier asked as he jogged up beside Geralt. He did remember some things from the previous night.

“Took care of it last night.”

“Oh,” Jaskier said, ignoring the twinge of disappointment in his gut. He’d thought that he might go along with Geralt for that contract. Of course...what exactly did Geralt want from him?

He resisted asking, hoping the answer would naturally appear, and followed Geralt into the watery dawn, to the small stable, where Roach stood, gleaming in the filtered sunlight.

Jaskier couldn’t help the yelp of joy that flew out of him, even if it made Roach snort and twitch. “Hello, old girl!” he hummed, pushing past Geralt to the horse. His angst was washed away momentarily by the soft look in the horse’s eye, the way she sniffed him and didn't even bite him once as he patted her nose and rattled off enough compliments to make a whore blush.

Finally, Geralt took the reins and began leading Roach out, letting Jaskier trail after them.

Caught up in the familiarity of it all, Jaskier didn’t come to his senses until they were outside the gate of the city, pushing into the forest. “Geralt. Geralt, wait!”

He pulled Roach to a stop and glanced back at Jaskier, wordlessly staring.

“We have to talk.”

“About what?”

Jaskier huffed, and rolled his eyes. “Don’t play the fool, darling, it’s unflattering on you.”

“Like that mustache.”

Jaskier’s eyes nearly flew out of his head because the man had the nerve. “Well, it’s bloody gone now, you great oaf! As if you have the right to be giving me fashion advice, mister ‘I don’t own anything outside of leather, and I only wash it once a year!” I’ll have you know that I have gotten quite a few compliments from--you are distracting me.” 

Geralt had the balls to smirk at him. He had been teasing him. Geralt of fucking Rivia was teasing him, and Jaskier wanted to wrap himself around the man like a leech and never fucking let go.

That well of pain bubbled in his gut, reminding him of its presence. “We really do have to talk, though.”

The smirk fell from Geralt’s face, and he seemed suddenly torn between looking anywhere but Jaskier and studying him like a book. “What about?”

“The mountain.”

Any humor in the air disappeared, scorched away like fog on a summer morning, leaving Jaskier just hurting. The memories were back stronger than they had ever been, no that Geralt was really here. Had he broken it again? Would he have stayed quiet? Was his Witcher going to leave him behind all over again?

Jaskier wasn’t sure if he could handle losing him again.

“What do you want me to do?” Geralt asked, as if the answer could possibly be simple.

Jaskier wanted to tear his hair out. “I don’t...Just. We can’t do nothing.”

Geralt was silent, and so, as usual, Jaskier was forced to fill in the gaps. “Geralt, you hurt me. You hurt me very badly, and maybe I deserved to be hurt, maybe I really am the one shoveling your shit. That’s what I’ve told myself these past years. But the fact that you’re here, in front of me right now, makes me think that you might have another idea. And if you do, if you didn’t really mean to send me away that day, you better fucking tell me now. Because if you don’t, I can’t go back to this. I can’t be--I can't travel with you if you really believed what you said to me that day.”

Somehow, Geralt’s face remained utterly unchanged, but there was a kind of brokenness in his tone as he asked “Why?”

The brokenness didn’t make Jaskier feel one bit better. It made him feel downright awful, honestly. And Geralt had no fucking right making him feel awful, not after all this pain, and all this turmoil. “Dammit, Geralt, open your ears! I...have feelings, alright? Far, far too many of them, if I’m being entirely honest, and I can’t just pretend you didn’t say those things you said on the mountain. You hurt me..”

“The Countess hurt you hundreds of times.”

Jaskier could only blink. Because the Countess DeStael had been years ago, a futile distraction, and it did things to Jaskier to think that Geralt remembered that drama. Ho much else did he remember? How many other little facts about Jaskier had he been hanging onto the same way that Jaskier held onto facts about the Witcher?

But Geralt was still looking at him, and so he fumbled out, “Your point is?”

“You always went back to her.”

He could have laughed, honestly. To compare The Countess to Geralt was...Downright insane. Because… “Geralt, that wasn’t you.”

Geralt made the face that he made when he didn’t understand something, and Jaskier despised the fact that he recognized it so well.

“At risk of sounding poetic, you’re...you’re the drug I can't stop taking. Those other flings, all the other flings, they were fine, but you...You have so much excitement and so much pain wrapped around you, you're more intoxicating than the heaviest wine. But just like too much wine, you'll end up killing me someday."

“I will.”

The reply was succinct, and Jaskier blinked. “What?”

“I’ll get you killed someday.”

This time, he couldn’t hold back his bark of laughter. “You think I don’t know that?” Geralt just frowned. “I’ve always known I might die being with you! From the first monster we faced, I realized the stakes, but I accepted them because dying with you would leave me fulfilled.”

He hadn’t quite meant to say that out loud, but now it was too late, and Geralt was tilting his head. “You’re reckless.”

“I’m an addict,” he shot back, the words certainly getting ahead of him this time. “I was addicted to how lovely it was was….how lovely it was to want you. How lovely it was to tail after you, and I'm just as addicted to the pain of you breaking me. Why else do you think I'm here right now? Why do you think I opened that door this morning? I'm a glutton for punishment."

“Why?”

“You’re going to have to be more--”

“Why do you assume I’d break you?”

That was. A hard question. Hard to hear and even harder to answer, because Jaskier didn’t know. Not really, if he was being honest. That had always just been the way of things. Good things ended, and very good things ended spectacularly badly. It was hopeless to think of anything else. "It always happens in the end, doesn't it? If there's an up, there must be a down."

"I don't want to let you down,” Geralt was looking at him, now, staring, studying. Jaskier felt far too known. “Not anymore."

"Geralt--"

"Are you addicted to me, or to the pain of losing me?"

Jaskier felt heat press behind his eyes all of a sudden because that question cut far too close to home. Those were the kinds of words he never let himself say, because what if they were true? He couldn’t think of how to reply, so, as usual, he opened his mouth and let words pour out without him thinking very much at all. "I must say, the pain of losing you was the only down that hasn't been worth the up. It’s not that I regretted,” he quickly added. “Not that I would trade the time we've had together for the world. We're--we were….I mean we were friends. But, losing you, up on that mountain...that's as….that's not what I was looking for. It's not something I can handle, even if it's what I think I want. And I know I’m not making any sense, I'm just trying to say that, this?” He threw out an arm to motion to the space between them. The irreparable, aching gap between them. “Right here? I can't pretend. I can't go back. I can't lose you again."

"You won't."

Jaskier’s brain cut out mostly to static noises. "Excuse me?"

"I won't let you go again."

The world crashed back with staggering alacrity, and gods, he could go for a good cry and a drink, not necessarily in that order. Because Geralt was looking at him like he meant the things he was saying, but Geralt didn’t know what he was saying, he very rarely did. "Geralt, that’s...that's very lovely. Sweet. I'll...I'll write a ballad about that one, certainly, but you understand, I...I can't just go back to normal. Once I realized how badly I want you…” Geralt’s brows shot up, and Jaskeier wanted very badly to die in a corner. That’s not what he meant to say. It’s what he was thinking, of course, and what he had been thinking for years, but he never meant to say it. Not like that. “Or this. How badly I want this….I can't just go back to pretending."

"Then stop."

He was torn between being heartbroken and frustrated, so he settled on a very, very deep sigh. "I'm sorry, you're just really not--"

"Stop pretending. Fuck all of that."

Now Jaskier was confused. “Geralt, I…"

"You love me?"

Jaskier gaped. Because what else was he supposed to do. Geralt was fixing him with a hard look, his eyes glinting like chips of pure gold in the early dawn, and he’d dreamed of this happening a thousand ways, but never once had he imagined it happening half a mile outside of a ratty town, when he was sweating like a pig, his nose was busted to hell, and Geralt was perched up on Roach looking at him like he’d just asked for the time of day.

"You've never been shy a day in your life, Jaskier. Don't fucking clam up on me now."

Shock, fear, and a medley of other strong feelings welled up into indignation. How dare Geralt suddenly appear in his life after two years, not even offer an apology, then start talking like Jaskier owed him the truth. "Well I'm sorry, it's just not something--"

"Do you love me?"

"I fucking guess, you great insensitive, hulking bastard!"

Jaskier froze inside and out because he’d really just said that out loud. After some twelve years of pining, he’d admitted it, and Geralt was opening his mouth to speak, and--

"Good."

Jaskier’s jaw dropped faster than a lad’s balls on his first visit to a whorehouse. He was aware that he was squeaking, but didn’t really give a shit, because the whole world was turning upside down so he might as well shriek all he wanted to. "Good!? What do you--you can't just-- what does good mean?!"

Except then, Geralt was turning and riding away, slow enough for Jaskier to follow which didn’t make a fucking bit of sense. It would be one thing if Geralt was riding away fast--a frantic flight from the crazed musician who just confessed his feelings. But this...trotting along like that had just been another normal conversation for the road, like he expected Jaskier to follow--that just made absolutely no sense. “Oh, no, you godsdamned brute, you are not just pretending that didn’t happen.” He had to run to catch up with Geralt. “I just laid my feelings bare for you, and you just say good? Like I’d told you I wanted pheasant for dinner, Geralt, what the hell!” He got no answer, so instead of playing along with the Witcher’s little game, he stopped dead in the road, trying not to pant at the heat and the thrumming of his heart. “No. No, you are not just going to carry on without telling me how you feel.”

Geralt let out a long-suffering sigh, but stopped Roach, turning the horse about to fix Jaskier with one of those looks that melted him from head to toe. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

Jaskier steeled his spine as best he could when Geralt was looking at him like that. “And? What’s that meant to mean?”

If Geralt sighed any deeper, he might just burst a hole and deflate entirely, but at least this time, he swung off of Roach, approaching Jaskier in a few easy steps. Far too few, as far as Jaskier was concerned. The Witcher was in his personal space suddenly, looking much taller than he really was, and his eyes were so close and so gold, and Jaskier could feel the heat coming off of him, and he looked ready to snap a neck and oh gods Jaskier couldn't tell if he wanted to run or have this man’s children--

“I’m sorry.”

Jaskier blinked, and the words rolled off his tongue before he could stop them: “Bit of an anticlimax, that.” This got Geralt to smirk, and the break in the man’s stormy expression gave Jaskier the time to realize that Geralt had really just apologized. To Jaskier. To his face. “While I...That’s really quite kind of you, that doesn't exactly help me illuminate--”

Geralt grabbed him by the front of his shirt and let out a growl that reduced his bones to bands of melted steel, and kissed Jaskier, full on the mouth.

Oh. Oh.

For a beat, blessed silence flooded Jaskier’s head, before the sensations came rushing in. Geralt's chapped lips, the stubble on his cheeks chafing Jaskier’s chin, the way his nose throbbed, the smell of Geralt, like sweat and woodsmoke and earth, the feeling of his Witcher’s breath, hot rushing across his skin, the tingles that raced all the way up and down his spine, and settled low and looping in the base of his gut--

“Stop thinking,” Geralt growled into his mouth, and Jaskier shivered in his grasp, and kissed him back because he’d been waiting twelve years for this and it was better than he’d ever dared to dream.

“Wait,” Jaskier said, suddenly, tearing his mouth away from Geralt’s, trying not to flush too much at the man’s proximity. Dammit, he wasn’t some blushing virgin. He had bedded hundreds of men and women across the continent, and he would not lose his head just because one bloody Witcher had just given him the best kiss of his life. “Wait. The apology, was that for--”

“It was for the mountain,” Geralt huffed.

“Oh,” Jaskier said, trying not to sound as small as he felt. “So it wasn’t for this?”

It was a foolish thought that had popped up. A thread of insecurity that he was now tugging to be a whole tear. Because, if Geralt was apologizing for kissing him, if he meant to use Jaskier and then toss him out--

Geralt let out a breath that came much more like a growl and kissed Jaskier again, and he was quickly beginning to learn that this might be Geralt’s way of expressing his affections. Which he could deal with. Geralt gripped a handful of his hair, pulling it just so and Jaskier couldn’t help but gasp, his eyes rolling back in his head.

But then Geralt was pulling away, and Jaskier was looking into his eyes as he said, “It was a mistake to push you away. If you want to be here, I would be a fool to stop you.”

That ‘here’ had so much weight behind it, Jaskier could write a thousand ballads and not tire of it. Because here meant Geralt's arms, with the world gone mad around them, and nothing being quite perfect, but being perfectly survivable, because they could have each other. Because finally, it seemed like he could possibly be getting an up without a down. It seemed like he might survive without having Geralt shatter his heart into a thousand pieces. 

Jaskier took a tip from Geralt's book, and instead of saying all of those utterly absurd things that filled his head out loud, he kissed his Witcher soundly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was struggling with this, and then I had a few glasses of wine and realized that Jaskier’s inner monologue is also me when I’m drunk, so I word vomited this in one night. This might get another chapter if these bastards still refuse to leave my head, possibly some classy PWP. Drop a comment if you’re interested in that, and lemme know what y’all thought!

**Author's Note:**

> These bastards crawled into my head and grabbed me by the feels. I couldn't help myself. Second part coming in a day or two because I wanna try my hand at fixing these two bastards. Comments nourish me.


End file.
